Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences to launch ‘Pink Bus’ for cancer detection

Tirupati: Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences (SVIMS) Director-Cum Vice-Chancellor Dr T S Ravikumar will be launching a 'Pink Bus' for benefit of Women, an official statement said here on Thursday.

The bus equipped with mobile mammography, gyn exam/ PAP smear, oral examination, breast ultrasound, educational video on cancer prevention, patient counselling in a bundled screening approach for the 3 main cancers affecting women: Breast, Cervix and Oral cancers.

Prevention and early diagnosis would reduce the cancer burden in the community and ameliorate the hardships affecting women developing advanced cancers, the statement said.

In the long run, the bus will also serve screening and prevention of other Non- Communicable Diseases (NCD) such as Diabetes, High BP, Smoking Cessation, Kidney diseases, heart diseases/stroke.

This program will be carried out in cooperation and collaboration with other government health programs, NGOs such as Rotary and industrial partners.

In addition to accompanying SVIMS camps, since Mangalam PHC serves as SVIMS rural health centre, it will be the starting region for this mobile cancer screening initiative.

It will be expanded to Tirupati Urban area, progressively expanding to Chittoor District.

“We hope to use this Pink Bus concept for health systems strengthening in the region of ayalaseema,” says Dr Ravikumar.

The Pink Bus will thus serve the dual purpose of “opportunistic screening” (screening the population seeking care or camps) as well as “population level” screening (using the bus to the community-based screening of all eligible population).

The total cost of the Pink Bus was Rs 2.19 crore and nearly 50 per cent of the amount was donated by Mumbai-based Mr Lalit Shah while the remaining funds from Sri Balaji Arogya Varaprasadini Scheme, as well as many members of SVIMS health system.